Kennedy-Lunsford Farm

Set among rolling hills between the villages of Brownsburg and Raphine, this 139-acre farm in northeastern Rockbridge County, Virginia, is anchored by a two-story, three-bay limestone house with a gable roof and interior end chimneys. Land tax and tithable records suggest it was built for Joseph Kennedy around 1796-1797, on land his family had acquired in 1762. The house originally followed a hall-parlor plan and is one of very few stone examples of that type in the county; only four of thirty-nine antebellum hall-parlor houses are stone. Later owners included the Harris and Lunsford families. Found vacant and badly damaged in 1975, it was restored in 1976 to its eighteenth-century appearance, with a rebuilt rear ell and a new front porch. Five early twentieth-century outbuildings survive: a bank barn, corncrib and machine shed, springhouse, chicken house and syrup house. Woodland borders shield the farm from nearby roads and buildings, preserving its setting.